September 2008

September 30, 2008

Last month, we got a huge bunch of soybeans from the CSA. Soybeans are also known as edamame (ed-eh-mommay for those who like me have pronunciation issues. No comments from quinoa crowd, please).

Soybeans. Leafy, green, super-healthy, fiber, protein, and I didn’t have any clue what to do with them. In fact, I had never even seen them au naturel. Here they are in all their leafy splendor:

This is how we got them, on these enormous 4 foot long branches, dangling with soy-pods. I convinced Molly that pulling the pods off would be as fun as, oh, I don’t know, whitewashing a fence, and we had a pile of pods in no time.

First we tried one plain and raw. It was, well, beany. Kinda crunchy, a mild, buttery bean.

Research said to cook. Boil in some salted water until tender. So that was next. I wasn’t sure how tender to go, since I wasn’t sure what we were going to do with them. I figured a salad for the first batch and some dip for the second. Once they were boiled for a bit, separating the beans from the pods was easy (although the pods are edible too.)

September 24, 2008

Fall is here, summer is over. I can’t say I’m sad. It wasn’t even a uncomfortably hot summer here this year, but that doesn’t change the appeal of leafpiles, frost and lots and lots of bread in our oven. We had shepherd’s pie tonight for dinner and at the same time Tina and I came to the realization that it wasn’t a summer meal, and that was OK with us.

For whatever reason, there are a few blog-related scraps that never quite reached the level of self-actualization required for their own posts and/or recipes. To throw out one more summer metaphor, they are like the green tomatoes that despite their unblemished and unripened bodies fall off of the vines anyway. Was their fate always the compost pile or was someone just too rough in the garden?

This was a swiss chard galette – seems like it would be good with any kind of leafy green that can withstand some heat (spinach, chard, mustard, dandelion, etc) – it was just basic tart dough, sauteed chard with onions, and some fresh mozzarella on top.

One of the best things to do with pasta in the summer. Cook spaghetti, dice tomatoes, chop a ton of mixed fresh herbs, a little garlic cooked in oil if you want, and mix it all together with olive oil. Toasty bread required.

This was an experiment in homemade mustard that failed spectacularly. I had such high hopes – mustard seeds soaking in vinegar, beer and wine – figured I’d have 3 different mustards with some additional seasonings and a great taste test. Yeah. Because everyone needs to have an out of body experience to share the joy of watching from above as your taste buds melt away from your tongue. Watery poison is what I got. Not giving up though.

These stuffed zucchini didn’t get their own recipe because they didn’t taste very good. We liked the idea of stuffing these baseball shaped guys and the stuffing itself was great – it takes a level of skill beyond our abilities to screw up tomatoes, pesto, croutons and cheese – but the zucchini blew it. They didn’t have that pleasant zucchini taste and the texture was bizarre – somehow managing to be hard and mealy at the same time. Oh well…there was no one there to stop us from eating the filling and leaving the rest.

One of my favorite childhood food memories is the simple dish of fat tomato slices with a blob of mayo and some basil. It’s just perfect. These were good tomatoes, but they weren’t the best we’ve had (the good ones really just showed up in our garden in the past couple weeks…just in time to DIE). Accompanying them, a shadow moving across the plate, a carrot that looks disturbingly out of place and some homemade chips with fresh herbs (more fun with the mandoline.)

First attempt at some quasi-pickled hot peppers. There were recipes out there with any possible ratio of water and vinegar, so that wasn’t much help. I figured 50/50 was a good place to start and these came out great. 50/50 water and vinegar brought to boil, added some green peppercorns, mustard seeds, coriander and a TB or so each of salt and sugar. Right into the fridge. Makes a serious addition to any sandwich (yes, that includes fluffernutters.)

Grilled fish…it always sounds so good. It always ends up with stinky grill grates covered in charred trout skin. This was no exception and it’s no accident that there’s no post-shot here. The pretty uncooked trout with limes and cilantro is all you’re going to get. Actually there’s the sauce too:

It was a twisted, pureed salsa verde (cilantro, parsley, lime, lemon and garlic) – it was good and will be back again…maybe even in that whisky glass.

The trout that did make it off the grill was actually pretty good…tips for grilling fish anyone?

Finally, a great use for any lingering tomatoes (works best with romas/plum) – half them, spread them out on a sheet pan, toss with oil and s/p – herbs and garlic if you want, and roast them as slowly as you feel like it. Freeze them and save for winter. Or make a pizza or tart out of them. Whiz them up into sauce. It works great with grape/cherry tomatoes left whole.

September 16, 2008

Whew. First off, I really need to make a few of these. All of the entrees look great, some look superb, and three of them looked good enough to win…

In judging, I tried to keep a few things in mind. First, was the dish inspired? Did it do something interesting and creative with the ingredients? Did the chef really get into it? Did they have fun with it or did they methodically attack the ingredients and bend them to their whims? Second, how was it executed and presented? And finally – if I had seen these dishes on a menu, which would I order? Which looked so enticing that I’d want to race home and try to make it myself?

Given the ingredients, I figured there would be some spring-roll style wraps and I wasn’t disappointed. I don’t think using the wraps for their “intended” purpose is a negative – in fact, most of the wraps had something to differentiate themselves from their neighbors. Let’s take a look at these first:

Natashya made an incredible quantity of beautiful wraps with a southwestern-style twist and a yogurt sauce with some fresh spices – given the quantity and the quality, she’s clearly an expert with the rice paper.

Amber, of the exploding eggplant (heh heh), had the most colorful wraps and used soy paper, which I hadn’t seen before. I liked the use of the eggplant/yogurt sauce as a binder – as a few others commented, the quinoa didn’t seem to want to stay put and that seemed to be a good approach to address that. Lori, like Amber included some eggplant, and turned the yogurt into a really nice looking raita – the wonderfully refreshing sauce. Speaking of refreshing, Tanna used what I think what was a statistically unique phrase in her wraps: “cooling wasabi” Yikes! In any event, I loved the wall of tomatoes that was visible through the wrap.

Kate (who, in the interest of full disclosure, is my cousin) did something I love -taking a known dish and turning it on it’s side – i think the “invisible” stuffed grape leaves would have been fantastic had she been able to get the rice paper, but even so, the homemade naan was an awesome touch.

Mike was the only one who took the approach of frying his rolls, which I must admit was my first thought with the wraps (being a complete sucker for fried Vietnamese Egg rolls), so I was happy to see some crispiness introduced into the contest.

All of the wraps looked delicious, all had something unique, but if I had to pick one that rose above the others, at least for me, it would be Haloo’s roll/wrap of the quinoa omelet. The presentation was wonderful and simple. I thought the idea of embedding the quinoa in strips of omelet was genius. The homemade tomato/yogurt sauce looked like the perfect balance for the omelet in terms of flavor and texture and in this case, the rice paper really looked like it was used as a delivery vehicle for the really good stuff inside.

Both of the non-wrap recipes really appealed to me as well – Magnus’s deconstructed Cambodian spring roll was absolutely gorgeous – the plate just had a tremendous visual appeal, and despite his stated aversion to rice paper and quinoa (“Rice paper is about as attractive as Michael Jackson” is certainly the funniest line in all of the posts), the dish showed creativity in the shrimp package and looked like it was executed perfectly.

Finally, we have Pia’s roasted tomato soup with the quinoa croquettes. It stood out amongst all the dishes as one that gave the tomatoes a larger billing – they became a major player as the other ingredients took a step back and the concept of using the rice paper as a wrap completely disappeared. Visually, the dish also looked fantastic, simple and a great combination of textures between the soup, the croquettes, and 2 garnishes – one cool and smooth and one crispy.

So, in the end, it came down to Magnus, Haloo and Pia…

What would it be? The stunning presentation and creativity of the nime chow and the quinoa omelet rolls? Or the standalone tomato soup with quinoa “meatballs” – looking both complex and simply satifying at once?

In the end, it was Pia’s!

It was the one dish I kept coming back to – the one that appealed to me the most as what I would like to sit down to at my own table. It had such appeal and the same time it appeared so simple and straightforward and really embraced the ingredients in a different way. Each element looked perfect individually and together.

I am longing for a quinoa croquette right now.

There’s a concept in the software industry (where I spend my days) that striving for the right design is all about making it as simple as possible but not any simpler. It’s put even better in a quote by the author/aviator Antoine de St. Exupery* that I read recently: “Perfection, then, is finally achieved, not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.” I think this dish came close to that – so congratulations to Pia, our winner, and to Magnus and Haloo both for beautiful, creative dishes that came so damn close.

September 14, 2008

The Paper Chef entries are in and jeez, they look really, really good (not making my job very easy.) They are still under consideration, so stop back in a few days for the results.’

…

In the meantime, let’s talk about tomatoes. This is the first time I’ve made a good ol’ traditional tomato sauce from scratch. It might be second nature for someone like, oh, Tina, who was raised on the stuff. Seriously, they just put it in her bottle when she was a baby. You should have seen the contracts I had to sign before marrying into her family. All this legalese about hereforthwith honoring and respecting the sauce.

Anyway, Tina has some fond and some not so fond memories of the annual sauce making as a kid. Being the one relegated to chief tomato-washer (there was only one), she woke on the mornings of sauce days with a sense of disappointment – the knowledge of losing her Saturday – and not from a warning the night before, but from the rich smell of the first batch of simmering tomatoes already filling the house. Time to head to the cellar and get scrubbing.

Now, I think the reminisces (new noun, just for me) are mostly happy and she jumped at the chance to take a bushel of tomatoes from her father’s garden this year to make sauce in our kitchen (in the interest of full disclosure, we committed two of our tomatoes to the process as well.)

Our final output was about 12 qts. We decided to freeze it. Her family used to make 10 times that amount, and they would be canned and processed. The scale of the operation was clearly different but the tools were the same. We inherited the food mill with the same ancient wood-handled corer and a butter knife in the box that Tina remembered from 20 years ago, used then and now to clean out the skins and seeds from the mill’s “exhaust.”

The operation itself was carried out according to the plans that were laid out (I was legally prevented from any alterations, and in hindsight, I can assure you I doesn’t need any.)

I have to say – and this is coming from someone who is admittedly not a huge fan of the “red sauce” and spaghetti and meatballs – this stuff is fantastic. It’s an extremely flavorful, lightly seasoned, not-too-thick wondrous tomato concoction that would be great for sauce, soup, braising, stews and baths.

Here we go:

1) Get some tomatoes – these were not “sauce” tomatos, typically Romas. These were a mix of plain old round tomatoes with some beefsteaky-heirloom big ugly mothers thrown in too. Much juicier than normal – but homegrown, that’s the important piece of information here..

2) Wash them there tomatoes. The easiest way – fill up the sink, let them soak, pick one out and get to work.

3) Use a coring implement, or other spoon/knife type device to scoop out the core from the top

4) Just soaking…

5) A batch that has been washed and cored. We had three of us working (well two adults, one kindergartner). It worked well with someone continuing to wash and core while we got some of the tomatoes moved on to the next step.

6) Quarter the tomatoes (with a glove if you have cut) and collect them in a bowl.

7) Behold the juice!

8) On the stove, over medium/high heat, with a little water in the bottom of the pan to prevent burning. Get them to a nice simmer, and stir every so often. The goal is to soften them up and release some more juice.

9) Once they were cooked down, we dumped them into a strainer and got some of the liquid out. I’m not sure how much – we may have retained more than it needed.

This is what they looked like right before they met their destiny.

10) This was their destiny.

11) The food mil in operation…What a fantastic machine. The tomatoes go in the top, You turn the crank, it turns an auger that’s spring-loaded inside of a perforated tube. The junk that doesn’t fit through the perforations (the skin and seeds) comes out the end of the auger. The juice and pulp come out of the perforations and down a separate chute.

Molly had a blast pulling out the skins and seeds.

12) Providing some motivation for the tomatoes…

13) The mill in action…

14) Once you’ve collected a big batch of skins and seeds, send them through again – lots of juice and pulp still hiding in there.

15) The amazing powers of a pot of sauce. Well, it’s not sauce yet. Got all the collected pulp and juice back on the stove over medium low and let it hang out for awhile. It cooked down a bit and thickened up. I suppose you could let it cook all day if you want. Ours ended up on the stove for a hour or two.

16) Time for some flavor. Big pile of basil with some parsley from the garden.

17) Lots of olive oil, chopped onions, 2 heads of garlic and salt. Cooked for a few minutes to soften. Added the basil, stirred it up and ran it through the food processor until it was pretty smooth.

18) Back on the stove. Cooked it for a few minutes over medium – it was bubbling lightly. You know you always wanted to make some green lava.

19) Pesto up close

20) Finally, we stirred the pesto into the sauce, added salt and a little sugar to taste, cooked for a little while longer and that was it. Let it cool down and got it in some plastic containers for the deep freeze.

The flavor/seasonings are not overwhelming. It’s still mostly tomato and can be customized for whatever you want to use it for. So far we’ve done two things – last weekend when we made it, we immediately poached/fried a few eggs in a pan of it for dinner. With some bread to sop up the sauce, it was ridiculously good.

Yesterday we had some fish stew in it. To bring this post full circle, it was similar to my Paper Chef 31 dish, but with halibut that our friend D.G. brought back from Alaska (he caught it when he wasn’t busy riding a motorcycle around the wilderness). Outstanding!

We now have 12 quarts of summer, caught, bottled and preserved for when we’ll need it most…

Buffalo, mid-February, it’s been snowing for a week. We’ve considered burning the TV for heat and Tina is walking around the house with 3 pairs of socks on and is wrapped in blankets like a mummy from Pottery Barn.

September 06, 2008

Just in case the sheer number of vegetables around here lately has been overwhelming, it’s time for some meat.

This was my first encounter with a lamb shoulder. I’ve had nothing but good times with legs and shanks in the past. Chops are good, but for whatever reason (probably price), they never get made at home. I was looking forward to trying the shoulder, and hoped it held the same promise as the other shoulder cuts – the pork butt and the chuck roast.

These cuts (not the pork chops and the filet) are far and away my favorites when feeling carnivorous. They don’t require anything fancy – in fact, I think they are at their best when done simply. And the best way to cook them is undoubtedly the braise. Cook it long and slow with some liquid in the pot and you’re braising, and you’re probably going to end up with something good.

The options, of course, are endless – to brown or not to brown, what kind of liquid, what kind of vegetables, flavors, aromatics and herbs. The sauce at the end – strain, reduce, puree, remove?

Lovelier than the sheer number of options are the overall pace of the preparation and the results. Braised dishes are perfect for evenings and cold weekend days (so I really had no business doing this in August) – you do some initial work to get the dish going, you get it in the oven or at a simmer on the stovetop and you walk away, coming back every now and then for a whiff or a stir. I almost always make them the day/night before, as most braised items refrigerate really well, often in the same pot, and usually taste better the next day anyway.

So, back to the lamb. I figured I would go with the simplest preparation of all to get a sense of the flavor and behavior of the cut. It was a 3 LB piece of boneless lamb shoulder that had been gathered up into a butchers twine net, but I released it from those shackles before cooking.

The following approach could be used as a nice pattern for any braisable item.

1) In a nice, heavy pot (with a lid) – heat some oil – just enough to coat the bottom – over medium high heat.

2) Dry the lamb off as well as possible, rub with salt and cook until all sides are well browned. The oil is going to sputter and make a mess, but it’s not only worth it, but necessary. The outside of the meat should look completely done when you’re done browning it. Keep flipping it until all sides are done.

3) Remove from pan – if the oil looks nasty, dump it out, add some fresh, and add a chopped onion and some salt. Cook over medium heat, scraping up the bits from the bottom as you go.

4) When the onion is soft and taking on some color, throw in a couple cloves of minced/sliced garlic and cook for another minute.

5) Add the lamb back in and pour in a dry-ish white wine about halfway up. You could use some chicken stock, red wine or even water instead.

6) Bring to a boil, reduce heat, cover and then either get it on a gentle, steady simmer (this is where a heavy Dutch oven pays its dividends) or put it in the oven at 300.

7) Cook for as long as it takes to get completely tender. I didn’t want the oven going, so I had mine on the stove and it took about 4 hours. You can flip the lamb every now and then. I left the lid tilted off toward the end, to let some of the liquid evaporate. No idea if any did.

8) Take the lamb out, pour the liquid into a tall glass – when it starts to cool, all the fat will come to the top and you can spoon it off. You can add salt/pepper at this point as well. I added some chopped marjoram and lemon zest.

You can stash it all in the fridge or eat it right away. I shredded the lamb, and ate it gleefully over some egg noodles with the sauce and some minced parsley and more lemon zest.

The results? I wasn’t disappointed at all, although I didn’t think I’d be. The cut braised beautifully – there were still a few grisly bits left at the end, but they were easy to remove when shredding. It was tender, juicy and full of flavor. The sauce was ridiculously good – it was fresh and concentrated, not muddy at all.

Molly, my official taster/new-kindergartner loved it, requesting more “lamb juice” at one point – it was both gross and appreciated.

September 02, 2008

After a brief respite Paper Chef is back! The little vacation was well-planned. The international commission that oversees P.C. decided it would only be fair to take the month of August off to allow our lesser known sibling have some time in the bright lights. Now that the Olympics are over, we can retake the headlines as the cornerstone competition of international acclaim, amazing demonstrations of athletic prowess and yes, well, maybe some controversial wardrobe choices too.

Hey, what you wear when you’re cooking is your business…and maybe your neighbors.

In any event, in Paper Chef 31 – July’s round – it was a first time for me and it was a blast! I was inspired by the ingredient choices and the dish cooked by Hank, the previous winner. It seemed like it would be fun and challenging and there was no disappointment whatsoever. I can only hope that there are some other new folks and returning competitors alike this time around.

Without further delay, the ingredients! Chosen randomly from this month’s list are the first three:

Yogurt

Quinoa

Rice Paper or Other Wrapper

And to this, from the list I added:

Tomatoes

I know that tomatoes weren’t the most interesting or unusual judge’s choice, but taking a cue from the season, it had to be done. Those of us in tomato growing climates know that there’s nothing that compares to a ripe, warm tomato grown in season, somewhere near your plate. So there you have it.

Yogurt, Quinoa, Rice Paper/Wrapper and Tomatoes

(Secretly, the folk music lover side of me was cheering for Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme)

Clearly, there’s some leeway with the rice paper. I would think eggroll/wonton wraps would be fair game, along with tortillas of varying shapes and sizes. But rice paper wraps are the goal if possible.

I’m excited for the quinoa and will be the first to admit that:

a) I’ve never cooked with it – have 2 bags of it in the pantry and it’s near the top of my list of recipes awaiting birth, so please, inspire me.

b) I was totally pronouncing it wrong until I read Melissa’s post last week. Oops. Good thing I hadn’t actually said the word to someone, just lusting after it in my mind.

Finally, the rules:

Design it, cook it, take some nice photos and write it up on your blog. Send a note to paperchef [at] gmail [dot] com. Ilva, our illustrious Paper Chef organizer will roundup the entries and the judging shall begin.

Entries need to be in by midnight DST* on 9/9/08.

Feel free to leave a note here or email Ilva with any questions or comments.